Omnibus Spending Bill Brings More Afghans to U.S. Amid Vetting Issues

Refugees disembark from a US air force aircraft after an evacuation flight from Kabul at t
CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP via Getty Images

A year-end federal government spending bill, totaling $1.7 trillion, funds more migration from Afghanistan even as vetting issues have plagued President Joe Biden’s administration and worried investigators.

The omnibus spending bill, released in the middle of the night on Tuesday morning, stipulates the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) for Afghans can prove that they worked with United States Armed Forces or U.S.-backed contractors in Afghanistan.

Specifically, the bill allows another 4,000 Afghans to secure SIVs to be resettled across the U.S. — raising the total number of Afghan SIVs to nearly 40,000.

The nation’s Afghan population has exploded since former President George W. Bush started the Afghanistan War in 2001, increasing to 133,000 in 2019, which is more than three times the 44,000 Afghans who lived in the U.S. before the start of the war. Most Afghans in the U.S. live on some form of public welfare.

Not included in the bill is a Republican-Democrat plan to provide green cards to tens of thousands of Afghans whom the Biden administration rushed into American communities, often without proper vetting procedures.

The expansion of the Afghan SIV program comes as federal probes and independent investigations reveal widespread vetting failures in Biden’s resettlement of more than 86,000 Afghans in the U.S. over the last two years.

In September, the DHS Inspector General issued a bombshell report detailing how Biden brought Afghans to the U.S. who were “not fully vetted” and may “pose a risk to national security.”

Similarly, in February 2022, a Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General report revealed that Biden’s agencies failed to properly vet Afghans arriving in the U.S., and that about 50 Afghans were flagged for “significant security concerns” after their resettlement.

Most of the unvetted Afghans flagged for possible terrorism ties, the DOD Inspector General report states, have since disappeared into American communities. The report noted that as of September 17, 2021, only three of 31 Afghans flagged with specific “derogatory information” could be located.

Independent whistleblower reports have come to the same conclusions.

In August, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) detailed allegations from a whistleblower who claims that the Biden administration knowingly resettled almost 400 Afghans in the U.S. who were listed as “potential threats” in federal databases and urged staff to cut corners in the vetting process.

A Project Veritas report alleges that the Biden administration resettled Afghans listed on the federal government’s “Terrorism Watch List” in communities across America.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

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